What Skills Do Your Need to Create Your Journalistic Legacy Website?
If you have not yet done so, pause now to explore “What is a Journalistic Legacy Website?”
Fueling your incredible Journalistic Legacy Website content is your unique, focused knowledge, skill, experience and passion. But that’s not enough to get you across the finish line. In addition, you will need the following skills in order to successfully reach and benefit your intended audience:
Branding Skills
How will you identify and name the key value you are presenting to the world? Naming something can give it extraordinary power. A strong brand name:
- Helps drive and focus the way you develop your content moving forward.
- Helps you identify your audience.
- Communicates the value of what you are presenting.
There’s nothing quite so empowering as a strong brand name.
Systematic Organization Skills
If you’re like most inquisitive life-long learners, you have, over time, amassed quite a bit of unique knowledge, wisdom and information in your area of passion. To bring others on board, you will need to organize your knowledge into a system your audience can effectively take in and utilize.
Communication Skills
Effective communication is the key to influence. How do you formulate your ideas so that they are quickly understood? How do you create the type of dialogue with your audience that engages?
Web Development and Troubleshooting Skills
- Unforeseen Technical Problems: Nearly every aspect of my journalistic legacy website LasVegasAreaTrails.com has, at one time or other, led to a barrier that could have killed the whole project. A small action that should have taken 5 minutes ends up taking a week due to overcoming unforeseen technical hurdles.
- Hurdles and Learning Curves: Each hurdle can require a new learning curve involving technical research and reaching out for professional help. It can be difficult to find the right tools, then face the learning curve for the tool, then the tool doesn’t perform as you hoped! It may be a website template, a server, a plugin, a social media platform, a website form…and the learning curve can divert you from the time you need to create and communicate your valuable ideas.
Image and Video Creation and Management Skills
- Image Selection and Placement: Visuals are a science unto themselves. Well-placed images have been proven to increase the speed of viewer comprehension, engagement and action by a factor of 6X or more. To avoid lawsuits, you will need copyright free images. But image selection and placement is just part one of the process. Next comes formatting.
- Image Formatting: Every image you see on LasVegasAreaTrails.com has been run through a 10-step editing and refinement process. And ahead lies the task of advanced video editing to create engaging “video shorts”.
Multiple passes through the entire website. Refinement, refinement, refinement!
Search Engine Optimization Skills
- What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of creating content on the web that will be attractive to search engines like Google and therefore served up to your intended audience.
- Visiblility to Your Audience: Even the most valuable content presented to perfection is invisible on the web without scientific effective search engine optimization. It’s like being all dressed up with no place to go.
More multiple website passes. Refinement, refinement, refinement!
Monetization Skills
How great would it be to turn your knowledge into a source of passive income on the web? What a dream to be making money doing what you most love to do?
It’s possible to monetize your content, but this also is an advanced skill area. You will need to:
- Create a Monetization List: List all the potential ways to monetize the content of your site. Coming up with such a list is a skill set in itself.
- Select Key Options: Select the best monetization options (low hanging fruit).
- Develop Products: Develop the best options.
- Brand Products: Brand, package and present your new products and services in a way that is attractive and engaging to your audience.
Marketing Skills
Whether you’re a high-school teacher, a pastor or a politician, you’ll need to market your ideas to create effect and influence. Marketing is also its own science and skill set.
- List Building and Email Marketing Skills: Growing your contact and client list members, creating a dynamic relationship and effectively engaging your list over time will keep you “top of mind” to your list. This translates into sales.
- Social Media Marketing Skills: Creating active engagement over social media and growing friends and followers is one of the most powerful strategies to bring new members to your contact and client list.
Ongoing Content Creation Skills
To Google, and to your audience, your website is like a block of melting ice on the internet. As soon as you create and post content, its visibility begins to melt and diminish. To reverse this trend you will need:
- Consistent Content Creation: Consistent content creation creates and increases visibility, reversing the deterioration effect.
- Create New Content: New pages, blog posts…
- Refresh Existing Content: Periodically make updates on all your website pages.
- A Systematic Content Creation Strategy: A systematic content creation strategy not only increases website visibility, but, if well planned, can also lead to new products.
Conclusion
Without the above skills (which is actually a short list) the vision for your journalistic legacy website may never become a reality. Each skill has its own learning curve.
Get Help to Save Time, Avoid Mistakes and Accelerate Your Success:
I have designed simple processes to save you a lot of time and costly mistakes as you advance your journalistic legacy website from dream to reality. I’ve turned all the above into a systematic step-by-step process.
This support could make the difference between the success or failure of your journalistic legacy website.
Review and Moving to the Next Step:
- You’ve looked at the Definition of a Journalistic Legacy Website.
- You’ve explored the Skills you will need to create your successful Journalistic Legacy Website.
- Now, find the Support you need to create your successful Journalistic Legacy Website.
